Learning to see situations as they really are—not how you might want them to be—can be painful at first. Yet here is a hard, beautiful truth: the much greater pain is to remain stuck by denying reality. Exposure therapy is a psychological treatment that is used to help people confront their fears. At its most basic level, it can be helpful in treating a phobia. Afraid of going outside? Begin going outside, and instead of fleeing for the comforts of home right away, push yourself to adjust to the environment for as long as you can. Similar treatments can be used for fear of flying, heights, snakes, open water, or any number of phobias. Beyond the basics, however, exposure therapy (I’m using it as a general term here, not a clinical one), can help with much more than just snakes and needles. It really just begins and ends with seeing things as they are.
In my case, when I felt stuck for several years, I had no problem with heights or going outside. But I had much bigger problems. Instead of dealing with those problems, I avoided them. Emails that would be difficult to read, I just didn’t read them. Conversations I should have had, decisions I should have made—I just put them off indefinitely. A moment of bragging, if you don’t mind: I was very good at avoiding. It wasn’t just a matter of being hypocritical; it was also acutely painful. I felt like I had two decades earlier during a brief stint in a telemarketing job. I wasn’t living the right life. I was wearing clothes that didn’t fit. I learned a variation of exposure therapy which can be described in a single, simple phrase: to recognize reality as it truly is, not as you want it to be. Exposure therapy is accepting that when you’re shipwrecked in the antarctic, no one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself. You have to force yourself to get up, build the hut, and hunt the seals—or whatever it is you need to do to move forward. Whatever battles you encounter in life, pretending they don’t exist or fighting the memories will only end up causing you more harm. To truly overcome hardship, you’ll need to look it in the face and see it for what it is: a circumstance that will only define you if you allow it to. Like other hard things, facing up to fears is very much worth the effort. P.S. Longtime friend Jonathan Fields has a new newsletter and community! I’ll say more about this later (we’ll do a whole interview with him), but I wanted to mention it now as well. You’re currently a free subscriber to 🌻 A Year of Mental Health. For the full experience, consider upgrading!
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Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Exposure Therapy
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